Yes, but they do business in the US. Aldi is German as well, but they have stores in the US so Americans can visit and form their own opinions about the brand. Not so with Illiad, so T-Mobile being owned by DT isn't relevant to the discussion.

I am not sure how it is not relevant. Tmobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom, a German company. T Mobile operates in the US and many other countries. If this offer goes through, T mobile US will be owned by Free, a French company. But it will continue to operate in the US.

I'll break it down. Generally, an acquisition implies some type of change. Not always, obviously, but usually when a company gets bought, its customers are going to feel some effects.

Now, current customers of T-Mobile know the company pretty well. They know its reputation, its quality of service, its recent history, etc. If, for example, AT&T were considering acquiring T-Mobile, these customers would have some idea of what to expect. They have all heard of AT&T, know its reputation, service, etc. So they could make some reasonable assumptions about what is going to change.

However, these customers probably haven't heard of Iliad. They don't know its reputation, its quality of service, its history, anything. So making any guesses about what this acquisition would entail is very difficult.

The locations of these companies are only relevant because they give us an idea of whether most people know anything about each company. T-Mobile is based in Germany, but that doesn't matter, everyone in the US knows them anyway. Free is based in France, which does matter because most Americans have never heard of them and know nothing about them.

Ah, I understand what you're saying right now. Still, if this offer were to go through, I'm willing to bet that 95% of Americans will not know the parent company's name - as is the case today (a shock I see on everyone's face when I tell them that T-Mobile is essentially a German company, or at least owned by one).

Semantics and a poor choice of wording on my part. T-Mobile may be based in Germany, but they do operate in the US and are one of the most well-known cellular providers.